


fate's guiding hand

by sunandroses



Series: RotBTD Shipping Fics [2]
Category: Brave (2012), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Hints of crack, Marriage Proposal, i know this is late but i hope the lesbians make up for it, i love chaotic rapunzel we need more of her, i mean we don't get to see it but i can feel it, merida's brothers are going to be THRILLED when they meet her i can feel it in my gut, no betas no similes we die, no meridas were harmed in the making of this fic, the rapunzel i've written for this au is pure chaos, the start of a life full to the brim with hijinks and shenanigans, what happens when ya girl meets an immortal with too much time and no fcks left to give
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24957880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunandroses/pseuds/sunandroses
Summary: On the boarders of an ancient forest there stood a castle as equally ancient and grand. The royal family that lived within first came into rule after they vowed to lead their people well and respect the laws of the land.One such law ordained that the forest must never come to harm by their hand.Princess Merida, eldest daughter of the current ruling family and heir to her clan, stood staring at the groove her arrow had made in the wood of a tree and wondered if that counted.Wherein a princess ventures into an enchanted forest to retrieve a missing arrow and happens upon the garden of a slumbering goddess.
Relationships: Merida/Rapunzel (Disney)
Series: RotBTD Shipping Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783951
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	fate's guiding hand

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SORRY THIS CAME OUT LATE BUT HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!
> 
> Also, I want to clarify here - I barely know a thing about Scottish or Gaelic myths so for the sake of me not messing things up terribly I didn't write this trying to make it sound like it came from them. For now just assume that the setting of this story is a fantasy realm where gods, goddesses, and mythical phenomena are a known but rare occurrence.
> 
> In this fic, Merida is 19 and Rapunzel is mentally 18-ish.

On the boarders of an ancient forest there stood a castle as equally ancient and grand. The royal family that lived within first came into rule after they vowed to lead their people well and respect the laws of the land.

One such law ordained that the forest must never come to harm by their hand.

Princess Merida, eldest daughter of the current ruling family and heir to her clan, stood staring at the groove her arrow had made in the wood of a tree and wondered if that counted.

Behind her, her horse nickered. She cast him a glare.

“This is all your fault, you know.” She gestured to the bark. “I hadn’t meant to hit it. I’d brought driftwood from the river, set it all up on the rocks, and did all the things for a good practice. But nooo sir I can’t have that, can I? Instead my horse _somehow_ gets spooked by a sound from the bloomin’ forest and then what do you know? One arrow goes here-” she pointed her now-broken arrow at the tree, “-and the other one goes flying aaaaaalllll the way over there!” Merida flung her arms up to the sky, where her other arrow had gone sailing over the treeline.

Angus shook out his mane and huffed. She was half-convinced that that was his way of sticking his tongue out at her. Merida rolled her eyes.

“Oh yes, very mature. Well if you’re so sure about that, then why don’t you help me get the other one back?”

She walked to him, but on reaching for his bridle he shied back, pawing the ground nervously. She tried again and he did the same thing.

Her hands went to her hips and she gave him a hard look. “… You are acting very strange.”

Her horse huffed again. _No, I’m not. This forest is dangerous and I don’t like it. My behaviour is reasonable._

But dangerous magical forest or no, Merida was on a mission. With her horse pacing behind her, Merida took her first few steps into the forest. It was dark and very dense. Even with keeping the edge of the treeline in her sights, it was obvious that the little room the trees and bushes gave her to pass through wouldn’t be nearly enough for a riding horse to get by, let alone her formidably large war horse.

Merida returned to Angus and led him a little ways away from the trees. Settling her bow and quiver on the ground, she tied his bridle to an outcropping of rock and petted his nose.

“You stay here. I’m going to get my arrow back. Then we’ll go home and get a nice supper for ourselves, how do ya like that?”

She tried to sound reassuring, but Angus still nudged past her hand, pushing his head to her chest. She gave in and hugged him, waiting until her heart beat had slowed before she let go.

With only a hunting knife stowed in her boot, Merida walked into the forest.

The trees crowded around her. As soon as she’d gone far enough in that she lost sight of the outside, it was as if the light of day was completely cut off and she was left wander in a twilight-like gloom. Branches grabbed at her dress and hair, but she ignored them. She expected she would need to walk for a while before she found her arrow so might as well get used to it.

Merida climbed over the uneven ground and kept a close eye out for roots that would trip her up. Every now and then she’d look around and find a patch of dirt and dig her heels into it, marking the ground enough that she could find the place again if she needed to. She didn’t dare mark any of the trees.

The one thing she was relying on was that the forest didn’t want her arrow in it anymore than she wanted to be trekking through it. Perhaps the forest would yield up a path for her. Perhaps it would lead her to what she sought. Either way Merida wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if she knew that she’d left something in the forest and had done nothing to get it back. It brought back the stories her mother had often told her and her brothers, of people leaving parts of themselves behind and something from the forest following them to their homes to bring ill fortune into their lives.

Merida shivered, the cool breeze brushing past her shoulders. It carried with it the voices of the forest. What should have been bird calls sounded like high, tinny laughter to her ears. Rustling leaves and forest creatures skittering along dry ground came to her like the whispering of nearby voices. The small bit of light the trees allowed the mosses and bark on the trees become faces if Merida looked at them from the corner of her eye.

She shut her eyes and shook her head – a wrong move. Something reached at her head and tangled in her hair, yanking her back. Merida shrieked. Her hands clutched her head and she felt a few strands rip out. The force pitched her forward. Her foot caught on a loose stone, making her fall head over heels to the ground.

Merida rubbed the stinging pain in the back of her head and looked up. There was no sign of her orange-red hair anywhere, not on the branches or ground or anything else.

She was about to spit out, _Rude!_ to the forest when she remembered the broken arrow she’d left behind. For all she knew this could have been payback for what she’d done. She settled for letting out an indignant huff and scrambling to her feet and turning around.

Then she blinked. And blinked again.

Before her was a structure of thin, tangled branches, woven together to create a circular gap between them about half as big as Merida was tall. On either side of it were tall thorn bushes that formed an impenetrable wall. By then the trees had backed away enough that Merida could see that the ground surrounding her sloped up into steep hills, as if she were at the bottom of an incline. Either she went back the way she’d come or she could choose go forward. There was no other way left.

Well … she’d wanted a sign. Now she had it.

Something about the way the forest had become oddly quiet made Merida feel like she should say something.

“I have come here to retrieve what is mine. I enter bearing no ill intentions.”

When the forest didn’t respond, Merida nodded her head once. She took a deep breath, hiked up her skirts, and climbed through the circle.

The moment her feet touched the ground on the other side, Merida noticed a few important things. The ground here was flat, with not a single errant root or stone poking up from the packed soil. Around her the trees formed a smooth, wide tunnel, branches arching up to intertwine with each other and form a roof. The path made by them went straight ahead until it made a sharp left turn. The whole thing couldn’t have been any neater if human hands had crafted it for a palace garden.

Still holding onto her skirts, Merida walked along the path. Her eyes darted every which way but no threat came. The path stayed true and did not branch, taking occasional turns here and there. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say that the light had begun to grow brighter.

A final turn and Merida was faced with … a doorway. Or as close to a faery doorway as one could get. About a stone’s throw away from her there fell a curtain of leaves and vines, marking the end of the path. Splintered fragments of light shot through the gaps, looking almost white to Merida’s eyes.

Great. Fantastic. So Merida was about to meet the Queen of the Forest and beg for her mercy. Not a single one of her mother’s stories had prepared her for this, that was for sure. The day was going great.

Merida was half in the process of turning around when she forced herself to stop. She was a _princess._ She was nineteen summers of age, long past the age for courting, and some day she would take up the throne and fulfil her duties as a leader. The _least_ she could do was start acting like it.

Not giving herself time to think about it, Merida marched to the entrance and pushed the leaves aside. She was met with blinding, brilliant light.

Merida clapped her hands over her eyes, groaning at the pain the flared through her head. Dark spots danced in-between the red-orange void behind her eyelids. She took her time rubbing her eyes and squinting through the tears, until eventually her sight adjusted and she could see.

What she saw made her wonder if she’d stepped into a different land altogether.

Before her was a meadow filled with more sunlight and warmth than she had ever seen in her northern bred life. Tall grass and wild flowers waved in a gentle wind, rippling and brushing against Merida’s fingers as she walked through. Spaced throughout were trees with long, slender branches that fanned out and drooped to the ground, creating shaded alcoves beneath their leaves.

The air smelled sweet and warm, like honey and apples and frothy cream on a sun-drenched afternoon. It was as if someone had taken the best parts of summer and concentrated it all in one place.

Merida walked between the trees, feeling a soft breeze brush her hair from her face. Where the forest she had left had been dark and frightening, the place that surrounded her gave her strong feelings of comfort and safety. It brought to mind the afternoon naps she used to take when she’d been very young.

That … was dangerous. She should not be feeling that way. She shouldn’t even be thinking of naps, let alone staying in that strange place for longer than she needed to.

She had to ....

... she needed ...

… what had she needed again? Merida tried to remember. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, only one of her breaths turned into a yawn.

Merida shook her head like a dog trying to be rid of a flea. That only made her dizzy. She stumbled sideways and right into the curtain of one of the trees. Suddenly there were tiny leaves crowded against her body and face and getting in her mouth. She spit them out. Her hands involuntarily came up to push them away, push them out of her eyes. She only succeeded in tangling herself further.

She twisted her body and overbalanced. The ground slipped out from beneath her feet and her world tilted itself head over tail. Branches tore above her head and Merida shrieked.

In that moment two things happened. One was that Merida fell on her face for the second time that day, now fully awake and sporting even more scratches. The other was that something heavy landed near her and shook the ground.

"Oww ..." Her hands stung. She'd landed on them first. Merida flexed her fingers and contemplated her aches and pains. Eventually she lifted her head up to spit out the rest of the leaves and gingerly roll over.

And saw a pair of golden eyes staring down at her.

Wide, glittering, golden eyes, set into a tanned face surrounded by deeply golden hair. That hair fell around her shoulders and all down her front, pooling on the grass she knelt upon.

Merida was speechless. Something about the golden girl made her feel lost for words. But she wasn't a girl, not really, not with her pointed ears or her too-wide eyes or the flecks of light that twinkled out of her skin like star dust. But more than that it was that, there was something about her that emanated _power._ A power so strong that Merida felt the pressure of it push against her.

"You woke me up." It wasn't a question. "What is today?"

".... ah?" Was Merida's intelligent reply.

But the girl didn't repeat herself. Instead her hands went to Merida's face and they cupped her cheeks. Merida's mind melted into mush. Every part of her suddenly felt warm and sweaty.

She watched as emotions flickered through those strange eyes, watched as they began to widen with what could be described as shock. "... How ... but that means ..." The girl's hands left her face. They took hold of Merida's hands and suddenly Merida found herself being pulled to her feet. Merida wobbled for balance but the girl was already up and dragging her long hair - very, _very,_ long hair, so long that it not only fell past her feet but trailed on the ground and curved up into the trees that the girl had supposedly fallen out of. She tugged away from them so that more of the hair came falling down. The two trees had grown so closely together that their branches intertwined and formed a sloping canopy overhead.

Merida absently noticed that her hands no longer hurt. She brought them up to her face and blinked at what she saw. Where her palms should’ve been covered in angry red scrapes, they were instead pink and whole. She looked up in time to see the golden girl dive into the shallow nest her hair had made on the ground.

"... where is ... should be somewhere ... oh, OH! FOUND IT!" She clambered out and ran over to Merida. In her hands she held Merida’s arrow.

“There! That’s yours, and now you have that we shall leave. Come come come – let’s go.”

In one hand went Merida’s arrow, in the other went the girl’s smaller – but surprisingly stronger – hand as she tugged Merida back the way she’d entered. Around them the meadow was changing. The trees surrounding them began to groan and creak upright, their branches growing shorter and thicker. The numerous, tiny leaves fell from them like rain, soon replaced by wider, greener ones and bearing flowers and fruit in between. The light became less of the bright, hazy thing it had been before and instead took on something more solid and true, lighting the path in the grass that literally began to pave itself beneath the girl’s feet.

While Merida struggled to keep up, trying not to get her feet tangled in the long hair, the girl led her with the assurance of one who knew that the forest she walked in would listen to her. It took Merida a few tries to find her voice.

“Where – where are we going?”

The girl turned back and shot her a grin. “To meet your family and get married, of course!”

 _“Married?”_ Merida’s heels dug into the dirt, which had no effect on slowing either of them down. “I don’t even know you! What makes you think I want to marry you?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because I – I – I’m human! You’re not. You don’t even look human – and – and you-”

“Is that all?”

The girl stopped suddenly and turned to face Merida. As she did, she began to change. The hair that had been trailing behind them began to shed from her head, dissolving into the grass until nothing was left. In their place there grew wispy, brown hair that fluffed and curled above her shoulders like downy under-feathers. The flickering lights scattered around her bronzed skin dimmed and darkened, changing into moles and freckles.

Merida watched open mouthed as the features of her face changed, bones shifting and muscles filling out until she was left staring at a round faced, rosy cheeked girl who looked more like she belonged in a village selling apples than anywhere near a dark forest. The one thing that didn’t belong on that face were her eyes. Even as they went from deep gold to rich green, they did not lose their brilliance. The lights within them twinkled back at Merida, creating a green-gold hue reminiscent of summer and sun and firefly wishes.

The girl had come so close that Merida caught the scent of her, sweet like wild flowers. It did absolutely nothing to help her racing heart and burning face.

The girl smiled at her like she heard Merida’s thoughts loud and clear. “I might not be of the mind reading sort, but I know the truth when I see it. And I know that you can spot an adventure when you see one.”

She tapped Merida’s nose and stepped away giggling when it made Merida sneeze.

“Who are you?” Merida asked, trying to rub the strange prickles out of her skin.

“I am Rapunzel. I am the goddess of childhood scrapes and misadventure. Thousands of years ago I was put to sleep. And now you are the first to have found my garden and woken me up. That alone tells me all I need to know.”

She held her hands out between them, palms up. “Like it or not, you have done me a service, and so I must repay you in kind. More than anything, what you want is a life of adventure, isn’t that right? One that makes you feel free and happy and alive, a life that is worth living. Take my hands and I will give that to you.”

She spoke the words that Merida had repeated to her parents her entire life, ones that her mother especially had turned down time and again. _You are a princess, Merida. Marriage or no, you have responsibilities. You owe it to your people to fulfil them._ It had taken years, but Merida had eventually conceded herself to staying put in her homeland and someday claiming the throne to it. That had been all she’d seen for her future for so long.

Yet within half a day she had gotten a goddess indebted to her. A goddess who promised to give her the one thing she’d long since convinced herself was out of her reach. One who even seemed to know that there was more than one reason she’d never accepted marriage to the sons from the other clans.

And who would ever say no to a goddess?

Merida didn’t give herself time to overthink it. She took Rapunzel’s hands in her own and let her lead them out of the forest.

**Author's Note:**

> One more Mericcup one-shot after this and then it's back to the hogwarts au fic! ᕙ(^▿^)ᕗ


End file.
